Thursday, March 25, 2010

China - Dictatorship's Dubious Internet Activities

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China, with 400 million internet users, has set up a new wall, The Great Firewall of China. The government is trying to oppress its citizens in new ways, but people still find ways around it with clever thinking and ingenuity. We have all heard and read about it, the whole Google-in-China saga.

I found this very interesting article in The Guardian (UK) today about Chinese censorship. It is well worth a read, and then you can thank your lucky star that you are not one of China's netizens, but can use the internet as you like.

Then I found another China-related article in the same online paper, this time about how Chinese hackers are hacking Gmail accounts. The article also tells you how you can check if your Gmail account has been hacked, if there has been unusual activity. It is somewhere down in the small print at the bottom of the page. Read about how to check and also set it to alert you if something suspicious has been detected.

Who is using your email account? Well, don't panic, but it is worth checking out. And it is always useful to learn something new, isn't it? Stay in control!

4 comments:

冠宇 said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Matthew Rees said...

I found the Great Firewall of China more of an amusement than a threat when I was the other side of it. For example, I could not use Twitter but I could use Twitpic which updates Twitter. I could even read the Wikipedia article on the GFW but not the section that tells you how to get around it!

Zuzana said...

It would be so interesting to know whether your first comment is related to this post.;)
Growing up in the former Eastern Bloc I know a bit a about censor ship, thus I will follow the link and read the article.;)
Have a lovely weekend,
xoxo
Zuzana

swenglishexpat said...

Matthew - I suppose that only goes to show how impossible it is to police this issue.

Protege - I deleted it after having spotted the word "s*x" among the Chinese signs. I hope you found the article interesting.